


What Dreams May Come

by ShootToKrill



Category: RWBY
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Flashbacks, Nightmares, Team JNPR - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-15
Updated: 2017-01-15
Packaged: 2018-09-17 16:15:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9333008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShootToKrill/pseuds/ShootToKrill
Summary: Nora's always been a vivid dreamer. It's a shame her subconscious doesn't discriminate between good dreams and bad.





	

Disclaimer: I don't own RWBY. 

* * *

 

The forest air is humid and pungent with pine. Nora can feel the prickle of sweat on her nape and the lead weight of dread in her stomach as she treads a familiar path through the trees.

She wants to turn back, but her feet march her forward. Her hand grasps in the sticky air for Magnhild and finds nothing.

On she walks, as she always does, until she finds herself in a clearing. She wills herself to look up, through the leaves scattering the forest floor with dappled sunlight, or sideways at the trees and the myriad patterns in their bark. She grits her teeth and tries to look at anything but the ground ahead, because she knows what’s there and would sooner scratch her own eyes out than subject herself to this again.

Her head bows of its own accord, as if some unseen tormentor had bent her neck by hand.

The symbol etched in the dirt, a calling card signalling the horror ahead, is as familiar to Nora as her own name after all these years. She tries to blink, finds her eyelids as immovable as if they’d been pinned open. Her heart begins to beat a tattoo against her ribs as if it, too, wants to escape.

And then she’s running, as she always runs, full-pelt through the woods. The throb of her racing pulse in her ears eclipses all other noise as her feet pummel the uneven ground, kicking up dirt and pine needles.

She trips on a root, and her aura offers no protection, leaving her with skinned knees and palms. But there’s no time, she has to get there _now_ , so she keeps sprinting, because maybe this time, if she’s that little bit faster, she can make it - if she just pushes herself that bit harder.

The cloying smell of pine is morphing into what she can only think of as the scent of fear: smoke and salt and copper and fuel, a noxious bouquet that dries her breathless mouth, yet dredges fear up inside her like water from a well. Her legs ache, threatening to give out on her, and try as she might she can’t activate her Semblance to boost herself forward. Panic fills her throat like bile.

She’s getting close, she can see the arch of the village gates, and her heart soars as she sees that it’s open. Beyond the gate, though, pillars of smoke are rising, and her hammering heart isn’t enough to drown out the distant sounds of screaming.

But screaming at least means ‘alive’. She can still save them.

Nora rushes for the gate as it begins to close, eyes wide with desperation. She throws a hand ahead of her, not caring if the ancient slab crushes her fingers, just as long as she can keep it open long enough to get past - Her fingers brush against coarse, chipped beams as the gate shuts, and she hears the leaden thud of the bolt falling on the other side.

She beats her bloody palms against the wood, cursing, before hurling herself full-force against the gate. It remains impregnable, though the impact sends Nora sprawling across the cracked earth.

The screaming is louder now, an inhuman sound, the noise made when all human pretence and vanity is pared back by agony beyond comprehension. But worse than that, Nora can hear pleading, the sounds of people begging with their last breaths for their freedom or that of a loved one, desperate bargaining for a sibling’s safety, a parent offering themselves up in their child’s stead.

It’s more than she can take, and a sob claws it way out of her as she runs again at the gate, landing winded on her back. It remains locked fast, but she can still hear them, knows there has to be somebody left to rescue.

“Please, please, please…” she finds herself muttering, a panicked prayer as she kicks at the thick wood.

And as if her gods were listening, a figure appears through the smoke atop the gateside lookout post, seeing what she cannot, an impassive bystander to the horrors on the other side.

“Let me in,” she begs.

“Nobody in or out”, grunts the sentry.

“I can help! I can save th- ”

“No way to know who’s been turned. Safest like this. Nobody in or out.”

“Please,” Nora screams, “you’ve gotta let me try, my parents - they’re inside, please…”

The sentry eyes her stonily as the crackle of flames grows impossible to ignore.

“Last girl we let in with a sob story caused all this”, he says, indicating the horror within with a jerk of the head. “Grimm. Corruption. Whole town, dead or worse. All I know, you’re another.”

“We were just passing through”, Nora yells brokenly, a sooty tear streaking her cheek. “I’m gonna be a Huntress, I can fight them, I can help - ”

“You can’t. Help yourself, and run. Run, and don’t come back.”

“I - won’t - leave!” Nora shrieks, bracing for another running jump at the gate. “I’ve gotta try, I can save them, I - ”

Her words die on her lips as she finds herself staring up at the barrel of a rifle. The sentry’s face is empty of expression as he gazes down at the hysterical girl.

“You can’t. It’s over. No more perimeter breaches. Don’t make me shoot you, now.”

His words land like anvils, and it’s the crushing weight of loss and failure that brings Nora to her knees rather than the weapon pointed at her head.

The sentry vanishes from view as Nora screams in anguish, so loud her throat feels it could rip. Her voice joins those of the condemned villagers, so close and yet so unreachable, as she pitches forward onto all fours as if to vomit.

Her grazed hands and split knuckles are a drop in the ocean to the visceral ache of grief; and the smoke is thick enough to choke her, but she doesn’t care. She’d suffocate willingly to have made it just seconds earlier. Her body is bruised all over from her frenzied attempts to barge the gate; and over it all, she swears she can hear them calling her name.

“Nora… Nora!”

* * *

 

She’s shaken into consciousness by a pair of soft hands on her shoulders. Pyrrha’s familiar green eyes are staring at her, bright in the dark and round with worry.

Nora is disoriented and gripped with panic as she glances around their dorm, where not a moment ago there’d been only fire and pain and gunmetal. She can’t speak. Her throat is hoarse, and she feels a spike of shame at the realisation she must’ve been yelling in her sleep. Still, she tries, opens her mouth to reassure her teammate - only to start crying, as unrestrainedly as a child.

At a loss for what else to do, Pyrrha envelopes her in a hug, cradling Nora as she shudders against her shoulder. The twilight stillness of the dorm room is ruptured only by hiccoughing sobs.

“The dream again?” Pyrrha murmurs, after a few minutes.

Nora nods shakily, gulping hard and wiping her nose messily with a trembling hand as she fights to regain control of herself. But the battle is in vain, tears streaming thick and fast down her face as the crackle of flames and the screams of the doomed echo in her ears.

She has to bite hard on the knuckle of her thumb to keep quiet as a fresh wave of tears pulls her under, leaves her lungs burning for air, threatens to drown her in a sea of grief. Her partner may be grimly familiar with her nightmares, but the last thing she wants is to have to deal with Jaune thinking she’s cracking up.

“Should I get Ren?”

Face in her hands, swollen eyes barely visible between her fingers, Nora shakes her head. Pyrrha sighs, feeling helpless as she pulls the covers around them both.

There are some things that all the love in the world can’t fix, some holes that can’t be plugged with kind words and good intentions. So she holds Nora in her arms, rubbing her back as it heaves with silent tears.

“I’m sorry”, she whispers into the dark - because what else can she possibly say?


End file.
